There were only to be seen the deep
woods, in myriad tints of bronze and red and saffron, and the
swift-flowing river. Overhead was the Northern sky, so clear, so
thrilling, and the stars were beginning to sparkle in the incredibly
swift twilight which links daytime and nighttime in that Upper Land.
Lonely and delicately sad it all looked, but there was no feeling of
loneliness among those who lived the life of the Sagalac. Many a man has
stood on a wide plain of snow, white to the uttermost horizon, or in the
yellow-brown grass of the Summer prairie, empty of all human life so far
as eye could see, and yet has felt no solitude. It is as though the air
itself is inhabited by a throng of happy comrades whispering in the
communion of the invisible world.
As a child Fleda had often gazed upon just such scenes, lonely and
luminous, but she was only conscious then of a vague and pleasant awe, a
kindly confusion, which, like the din of innumerable bees, lulled wonder
to sleep. Even as a child, however, something of what it meant had
pierced her awe and wonder. Once as she crossed a broken, bare mountain
of Roumania she had seen a wild ass perched upon a high summit gazing, as
it were, over the wide valley, where beneath, among the rocks, other wild
asses wandered.
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